


The Crush

by ElizaHiggs



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Book 5: Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Budding Love, Canon Compliant, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Friendship, Mild Language, POV Remus Lupin, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-12
Updated: 2016-11-12
Packaged: 2018-08-30 14:44:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,282
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8537122
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ElizaHiggs/pseuds/ElizaHiggs
Summary: I have no romantic notions--the idea is frankly absurd--but she's so warm, so kind, that it's frighteningly easy to lie to myself.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Hello everyone! It's a been a long time...I had been taking from writing fic for a while to write some original stuff, but with the week we've all had (here in the US), I just needed to work on something that felt comforting and familiar. I hope everyone else is doing alright out there.
> 
> This fic references events in _The Professor in the Photograph_ , but is otherwise canon-compliant and assumes that the scene in _The Werewolf in the Ministry_ never happened, and therefore is not a part of that series. (Apparently I've progressed to writing AU fic within my own ficverse). 
> 
> As always, feedback and comments are welcome and appreciated.

The mingled sounds of voices and scraping chairs follow me up the stairs. The meeting is only just breaking up, but I'd slipped away as soon as I could, and now I move into the reassuring isolation of my room, close the door behind me, and rest my forehead against the paneled wood. All throughout the meeting I had struggled desperately to resist the smile that's threatening to break across my face, and now I can give in and I'm grinning ear-to-ear, chuckling, laughing aloud with joy. What has this witch done to me, that I'm so far gone?

 _This changes nothing_ , says the voice in my head, the logical one that likes to pretend it's my conscience.

But it doesn't matter, and logic and conscience can go to hell, because I'm so goddamn _happy_.

And shouldn't an unrequited crush feel a bit more... _un_ happy? Shouldn't it hurt more? I wait for the injustice of my situation to rise and fill me. I wait for the usual bitterness. But instead I'm fighting down giddiness like a schoolboy with a Hogsmeade date.

It's utterly unwarranted. Dumbledore has assigned the two of us to stake out a Death Eater's house, on Severus' tipoff. It's not a date; we are colleagues. I doubt she's even noticed the greying, tongue-tied werewolf sitting across from her and hoping silently for some fortuitous opportunity to talk to her.

She's polite enough. No--more than polite: she's friendly, she's warm. She makes me laugh.

But that's the way she is with everyone. It's just how she is. None of that is about _me_.

James and Sirius and Peter used to say that I was the clever one, the witty one. The one with the wry sense of humor. But I don't seem to have my wits about me when she's in the same room. I once lost my train of thought in the middle of a sentence--I had been with Sirius in the kitchen, debating the best strategy for collecting Harry from his aunt and uncle's house, and she arrived with a few others for a meeting, laughing and pink-haired and energetic, and the words just died in my mouth. When I'd refocused on Sirius, I had no idea what we'd been talking about, but I could see that he knew exactly what was wrong with me. My instinct, as I've already said, is to run. As I'd hustled past her, making for the safety of the hall, she'd greeted me in that friendly way of hers, and all I could manage was a tight smile in return.

Of course, in the end it had been she who'd had the brilliant idea to lure the Dursleys out of the way. I had tried to compose, in my head, some compliment to pay her, and by the time I'd decided on a wording that didn't make me sound like a condescending arse the meeting had disbanded, the moment had passed, and she'd gone.

And then I had nevertheless persevered in making an arse of myself by introducing her to Harry as the dreaded "Nymphadora" on that particular mission.

Hardly a spectacular record of interactions. Certainly nothing that ought to inspire hope.

Not that what I'm feeling is hope, exactly. I have no romantic notions--the idea is frankly absurd--but she's so warm, so kind, that it's frighteningly easy to lie to myself. I have always desperately craved friendship, approval. And it's so easy, you see, to tell myself that this pull I'm feeling towards her is a desire for her friendship alone.

x

When Tuesday evening arrives, I pick out my least shabby set of robes and self-consciously pull a comb through my hair. It's never been as unruly as James' was, but I prefer it longer--the less often the need to trim--and the tangles have a tendency to grow rather wild. Just now, I'd prefer to appear as civilized as possible.

I turn to the mirror above the desk in the room. It's ornate, and dark-paneled, and spooky, like everything else in this house. My reflection is white, gaunt. Not much to recommend it. I haven't encountered many mirrors in the last fourteen years, but for some reason Grimmauld is brimming with them--the better for the Blacks to admire their beauty, I suppose--and my reflection still takes me somewhat off-guard. I don't know that I was ever handsome, but I am perpetually surprised to find an old man staring back at me from above the dresser.

Well. Nothing to be done about that.

I bound down the staircase, making for the kitchen, my blood pounding too hard to take the stairs at a pace befitting a man rapidly approaching middle-age (this _feeling_ , it's ludicrous, I feel sixteen again). I take the corner too quickly when I reach the hall and--

Crash into her headlong.

"Oh, I'm sorry!" she cries, and I realize she really does think the bump was her fault. Is she inclined to blame her normal clumsiness, or has she been skipping too?

"No--no," I say, steadying her a bit, my hand on her upper arm. "That was my fault. I was moving too quickly--I thought I'd be late."

She reclaims her balance and grins up at me. "Wotcher, Remus," she says happily.

My name sounds wonderful when she says it; the vowels softer, somehow, closer to _Reh-mus_ than _Ree-mus_. I grin back, but I'm so nervous my lips tremble with the effort.

It's then that I realize my hand is still on her arm. I pull it back like I've been burned, which, of course, only brings more attention to it. She eyes me warily. This is not at all how I'd imagined things going. Wasn't I going to impress her with my wit, or something? Make her eager to--be my friend?

I clear my throat. "Shall we?" I say, gesturing towards the kitchen.

She's smiling again as she slides past me into the kitchen. I wonder if she's used to this, if men make idiots of themselves around her all time, or if it's just me who's the idiot.

I set a kettle on to make coffee as she settles herself down at the long table. Nights are getting chillier now, and it will be nice to have something to warm us. I'd prefer tea but reckon the extra caffeine will help us remain constantly vigilant.

"I hope you like coffee, Nym--ah, Tonks," I say, catching myself just in time. I love the name Nymphadora. It's beautiful and ridiculous and suits her perfectly. She quirks an eyebrow at me but doesn't say anything, and I can feel the blood rising, so I turn back to the kettle to hide my face.

"Of course," she says from behind me, and I note with relief that she doesn't sound annoyed. "Wouldn't have gotten through Auror training without the stuff."

I nod, fussing with the coffee grounds. I should say something. It's my turn to say something. "Um," I say, measuring out scoops for the French press. "This'll only need five minutes."

Brilliant. Really witty, narrating the non-intricacies of coffee making at her.

"It's my first real mission, you know," she says pleasantly, almost as if she doesn't think I'm being stupid at all. I look back over my shoulder at her, but she's worrying a thread at the knee of her denims. "I've only been assigned to guard duty before now." She grins up at me. "I'm quite excited."

I nod again, now fiddling unnecessarily with the knob on the top of the press. "It's...not likely to be quite that exciting," I admit. "At least, I hope not."

"Damn," she says, in a would-be wistful tone.

"Well. I'll be grateful I have Mad-Eye's protegee with me, should the evening sour," I say, and she lights up.

"Mad-Eye speaks quite highly of you too, you know," she says, and I swallow hard.

"Does he?" I ask, and she nods.

"He keeps photographs in his house...he's actually quite sentimental. I'd been there a few times during Auror training, and I asked him about them. There was one on the mantelpiece of the original Order--I didn't understand at the time, of course; Mad-Eye just said it was a group of people who fought in the First War." She looks down at her hands resting on the table. For all her clumsiness, she possess an ability to suddenly, intensely still. "He told me stories about everyone."

My mouth feels very dry. I don't know whether to be intrigued that she has seen a photograph of me as a young man, or appalled that she'd come so face-to-face with the difference in our ages before we'd even met.

She looks up at me, and her eyes are twinkling, somehow mischievously. "I asked who the handsome young man was," she says, and her tongue darts out a bit to wet her lips, "and Mad-Eye said he was the new Defense Against the Dark Arts professor at Hogwarts."

I can't tell if she's teasing me or not, but either way, I don't think she intends to be cruel. I let out a puff of air that could pass for laughter. "Well, it's--it's been a fair number of years since then," I say, pouring the coffee into a Thermos, relieved for another excuse to hide my face.

"Mm," she agrees gently. "You were only at Hogwarts for a year though, right? What had you done before then?"

I freeze. I had thought--I had assumed--that all the Order members had been briefed. _Grimmauld Place: headquarters, Order of the Phoenix. Current residents: one notorious escaped convict and one reclusive werewolf_.

Perhaps that had been merely arrogance on my part. Perhaps Moody would not have thought to tell her what I am. Perhaps he hadn't thought he needed to. My name had been in the _papers_ for godssake.

Not all of the Order members are as kind to me as she. They maintain a healthy distance. I had thought she was one of those miraculously less frightened individuals. She has at times reminded me of James: confident, powerful, and unafraid to befriend both the weak and the dangerous. It had not occurred to me that she might not know.

The cold seeps into my blood, spreading outwards from my heart and down through my arms, and I clench my fists to keep my fingers from shaking. If she does not know, then alerting her now could compromise our ability to work together tonight.

And I don't _want_ to tell her.

I've been silent too long. "I'm not trying to pry," she says in a worried voice. "I was only wondering why I had never met you before the Order. Mad-Eye likes to keep his friends close."

"I--I've had some trouble finding steady employment," I say in a tight voice. I don't turn around.

"I figured," she says in a conciliatory tone. "Those Umbridge laws are so bloody unfair...I merely wondered where you had been, if not in London."

I let out a breath I hadn't known I was holding, and my hands really are shaking now, in relief, and I grip the edge of the counter. "Oh," I say. "That is--it's fine that you ask." I do turn around now, screwing the lid on the Thermos tighter than strictly necessary. "I...lost friends in the war. Almost all of them, in fact. Sirius was in jail. I didn't see in point in staying." Harry, I had regretted leaving. But Dumbledore had forbidden the Order from making contact. There had been nothing I could do for him. "I went to America. Found work where I could."

I don't tell her that I had contemplated simply ending it all. She's not asking for that kind of detail. I am surprised, however, that I want to tell her.

x

The mission is--mercifully--as boring as anticipated.

If lying with Tonks under a star-lit sky, free of the moon in any of its ugly variances, could count as boring. We've spread out a blanket on the grass to wait, confident that we are far enough out that we will not be tred upon accidentally. She casts Muffliatos and Concealment Charms around us, and my heart pounds as I feel her magic rush past me.

Once we've settled ourselves, she resumes our conversation as if we'd never left the kitchen at Grimmauld.

"It's hard to make friends with normal wizards and witches now," she confides, "with people who don't know what it's like to be in the Order, to be worried about Voldemort, people who don't think he's back." I'm impressed, although unsurprised, when she says his name. "It's hard to remember how to be normal."

I doubt, somehow, that the only witch or wizard the Auror program has accepted in three years was ever normal. I take a sip of the coffee. "I hope you are making friends, though," I tell her, and I grimace. I sound like an uncle talking to a favorite niece.

"Well," she considers, leaning back a bit on her hands and looking up at the sky. Her feet are tucked in close to her bum, knees bent high. I admire her self-possession, her openness, her beauty. I have a sudden desire to lean back with her, put my arms around her shoulders and pull her the rest of the way down to the blanket with me, to feel her weight on top of me.

Instead I force myself to look away as she continues, "There's very few people in the Auror Department near my own age. But Charlie Weasley was home last week--we were the same year. He set me up with one of his dragon hunting mates who'd moved back to London from Romania."

There's a sickening surge in my stomach and my chest feels tight. I know this feeling instantly, without ever having felt it before. Jealousy. Real, insidious, sexual jealousy for a man half my age who can get a job taming dragons and use his scars to impress the woman I--well.

If I am to be her friend, this will not be the last time I will feel jealousy. If I am her friend, then one day she will come to me and tell me about the wizard she cannot stop thinking about. And I will listen, with the patience and encouragement of a friend. If I am a good enough friend--and her man does not see through me instantly--perhaps I will even be a guest at her wedding, witness her bind herself to another man for life.

In another lifetime--one in which I am not a werewolf, and we are not separated by a generation--I'd like another go. She's my match, and all I can do is hope pathetically for her friendship, for some scrap of intimacy with which I must find a way to be content.

I pull myself back to the present conversation, smile, and try to exude friendly interest. "How'd it go?" I ask.

She shrugs off-kilter, one shoulder and then the other. "Like I said, it's hard to connect with people outside the Order. And he was a bit boring, to be perfectly honest," she says, with an air of nonchalance.

A dragon hunter is boring?

"This must bore you senseless," I say despairingly, and then cringe at how self-pitying I must sound.

To my surprise, she laughs. "Yes," she says, and her eyes twinkle conspiratorially. "I'm on a secret mission for the Order of the Phoenix with one of its foremost experts in Defense, and I'm absolutely dying of boredom."

I laugh too, gratefully. "Expert is a strong word," I comment, in what I hope is a modest, and not self-deprecating, tone.

"That's not what I hear from your ex-pupils," she says, grinning.

I smile back. "I liked teaching," I admit. I'd have liked to continue.

"What was it like?" she asks suddenly. "Going back to Hogwarts as a professor?"

Her gaze is intense, and I feel my cheeks start to heat. But once I meet her eyes, I cannot look away. "It was...strange," I say honestly. "Wonderful, but it was also--it was lonely. To be in that place again, but without the friends who'd made my time there what it was."

My friends, who at the time I'd believed were all either Death Eaters or dead. I drop her burning gaze and take a sip of the coffee. "But," I continue, "there's something to the place itself, too. I think I could be there completely isolated and still derive some sort of peace."

I pass her the Thermos and she takes a swig. Her lips touch the plastic just where my own had. She nods thoughtfully. "I think I know what you mean," she says, which is kind, because I don't think I'm making much sense.

"What about the other professors?" she probes again. "Did you make any friends?"

I dip my head back in thought. "Well, the only other staff my own age was Severus, and we weren't exactly...friendly...in school."

She snorts. "You don't say?" she quips, smiling wickedly, and it fully hits me for the first time that of course, she knows just how difficult Severus can be, because he was her bloody _teacher_. I'm attempting to flirt with a woman who had a professor my own age in school.

Fortunately, I doubt she's reading any of this as an attempt at flirtation.

I force a chuckle in response. "Yes, well--there was also Charity Burbage. She was several years older than Severus and I, but we did overlap at Hogwarts a bit." I feel warmer remembering Charity's kindness--one of the few souls to ever fight for werewolf rights--and I'm smiling. "She was the closest I had to a real friend that year."

"I always liked her," Tonks says quietly, looking down at the Thermos. "Do you...keep in contact with her?" She looks up at me, and there's some question in her eyes, something beyond what she's actually asking, and I want to give her an answer, but I have no idea what it is she's looking for.

"Er, no--not particularly," I say, confused. "We've written once or twice."

"Good," she says, smiling widely at me, and then suddenly the smile dies as she realizes what she's said, and she shakes her head with a movement that's as dog-like as her cousin. "What I mean is--it's--it's good that you had a friend." She's studying the Thermos quite intently now, examining the plastic Muggle portraits of Ringo, Paul, George and John. My own--a gift from my mother, when I was very small, and sad, and had no other Wizarding children to play with.

"Friends are the most important thing in the world," I agree gently. Her cheeks are tinged the same pink as her hair.

"Yes. I--there's not many people I can really talk to in the Order either," she says to the Thermos. "Kingsley is my _boss_ , and Mad-Eye is Mad-Eye." I reach over and graze her wrist with a knuckle. It feels--forward--to reach out and touch her like this, but she sounds so melancholy.

She looks up at me, eyes all chocolate and intensity. "I hope that we can be friends," she whispers.

"I would like that very much," I say, and her dark eyes are smiling, shimmering, and I think: I love this woman. And I am so bloody _fucked_ , fucked for life, and I can't even bring myself to care.


End file.
